A preventive cardiology curriculum will be developed at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center for medical students, residents and community health care providers to facilitate understanding of and methods to prevent cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The curriculum will emphasize this approach throughout the four years of medical school, in the residency programs of the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, and Family and Community Medicine, as well as the Cardiology fellowship. This program will focus on minorities and the role of the family matriarch in modifying life style issues for herself, the children, and her mate. It will concentrate on identifiable risk factors in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease, the potential and methods for their modification and anticipated benefits. it will utilize multidisciplinary resources from our Health Sciences Center to provide preventive cardiology education through two basic approaches: 1) coordination of relevant material presently taught; 2) introduction of selected new educational materials. It will incorporate methods found to be successful in other PCAA programs including an experimental approach to risk factor modification in medical students with longitudinal assessment. Knowledge and attitudinal assessment of those individuals providing cardiovascular information will be performed. There will be teaching exercises in core preclinical disciplines (health behavior, nutrition, epidemiology, biochemistry, and physiology). Preclinical courses will be supplemented with clinical correlations relevant to preventive cardiology principles with particular relevance to minority issues. There will be a new Preventive Cardiology elective allowing Native American medical students to educate educators to educate the matriarch in the Native American Indian community. Preventive Cardiology principles will be enhanced in the didactic and practical components of the residences and the cardiology fellowship. Several innovations will be added; focus on matriarchal education will be introduced in Pediatrics at the resident (Pediatric Practice Model) and medical student level (O'Donoghue Fitness Clinic) early through enhancing these already successful efforts and continuing throughout. Screening of asymptomatic first degree relatives of coronary patients will occur. Research opportunities for students and residents with core faculty will be provided. Health care providers at Talequah, Oklahoma (center for the Cherokee Nation) and Ada, Oklahoma (Indian Health services for the Chickasaw, Seminole, and Choctaw tribes) will be utilized as pilot projects to teach Native American Indian leaders on site to educate the family matriarch in preventive cardiology principles. The PI will be directly involved in teaching medical students and residents with an eye toward developing role models for female medical students and minorities. Through advice of the Advisory and Curriculum committees and an outside consultant, he will coordinate this multifaceted program. Regular evaluation of the program in comparison to current methods will be an integral component.